


Coming Home

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-16
Updated: 2014-06-16
Packaged: 2018-02-04 22:49:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1796083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jo is miraculously brought back to life. Sam helps her through it by reminding her what life is all about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming Home

Sam had never been one for staring, for gawking uncontrollably or forgetting proper social skills, that had always been Dean. Sam was the good one, the one who could smooth over the situation with a smile and his puppy dog eyes, but as the blonde in front of him slammed down a burger like a dying man eating his last meal, his eyes couldn’t find anywhere else to reside but on her.

“I can feel your eyes on me,” she mumbled around the food in her mouth, setting down the burger and looking up with a raised eyebrow. “I know I’m pretty, but no need to stare, sweetheart.”

“Jo…” Sam trailed off, his words soft and his eyes softer. “You’ve been-”

“Dead, I get it. But, hey, you haven’t been a hunter until you’ve died and come back, right?” she spoke, but Sam could sense a sort of emptiness in her words.

“You’ve been dead for a-”

“Very long time, I get it, must we continue to dwell on it?” she replied, forcing the largest smile on her face she possibly could before turning away. “A lot happen while I was gone?”

“Yea,” Sam replied with a nod, “a lot happened.”

Jo nodded slowly, pushing her blonde hair away from her face and taking a deep breath. Several seconds passed before anything more happened; Sam continued to watch her, her movements, her gestures, the natural grace she had that he had almost forgotten could exist in a person. She took one last breath and then her walls were back up, another cheery expression taking over the unsettled look she had just held.

“Do you know why I was brought back?”

“I can’t say that I do, but I’ll look into it,” Sam offered.

Jo nodded once, looking back up at Sam and giving a tired smile. “Being dead for a freakishly long time and being stuck in a grave tires a girl out, not to mention make her need a shower pretty badly...is it cool if I go upstairs and help myself?”

“Yea, Dean and I are staying in the rooms to your left so pick one to the right and it’s all good. I’ll get you something to change into when you’re clean.”

“Thanks, Sam,” Jo told him, her voice thick with emotion. It made Sam’s insides clench up, and he nodded, one of his signature dopey smiles on his face. He watched her walk up the stairs and out of his sight until he couldn’t even hear her footsteps, but he did hear the faraway creak as the pipes began to be put to work. All the time, thinking one thing.

She’s _back_.

* * *

There were soft plops coming down the stairs, so soft if Sam hadn’t been trained to notice the smallest of details he probably wouldn’t have noticed at all. The first thing out of his mouth as his eyes caught on her was a loud bark of laughter, followed shortly by her own laugh. His low chuckle and her high giggles mixed together in the small space to create some kind of enchanting symphony of sounds.

“You look ridiculous,” he released out in between his hard laughs, actually feeling tears at the side of his eyes.

“If you haven’t noticed, you’re a bit bigger than me,” she stated, throwing her arms out wide and pointing out the excess fabric hanging past her arms. This only brought Sam to more laughter, making him bend over and clutch his chest. Jo couldn’t help but wonder when the last time he had laughed like this was, but just as the laughter caught her in another sweeping wave, the door opened with a loud bang against the wall that made her jump.

“Sam! I need some goddamn answers right this minute so if you wouldn’t mind-” Dean raged, stomping into the room and stopping in his tracks as his eyes landed on the blonde. “Jo-”

“Hey,” she spoke, trying to pump as much false bravado into her voice as possible, though clearly falling short. Her hand rose up and she waved her hand awkwardly, unsure of what to do.

“You’re-”

“Alive,” she answered. “Someone had purpose for me, so here I am it would seem. Buffy-ed my way out of a grave a couple of hours ago, got ahold of Sam through some contacts and here I am.”

“Wait, Buffy-ed?” Dean spouted, an unreadable look on his face.

“Yea, out of all the pop culture you spout out you don’t get Buffy? Really?” Jo responded incredulously.

A small smile found Dean’s lips, and he moved forward, grabbing her in a hug and holding her there tightly. “We’ve missed you, Jo.”

Dean pulled back as the familiar sound of an angel entering the room reverberated around them. Castiel took in the scene, his head quickly quirking to the left in his stereotypical look of confusion. “Jo,” he stated.

“So, I’m guessing that means it wasn’t you who brought me back,” Jo spoke. “That answers that question.”

“You haven’t heard any talk over angel radio about Jo?” Sam asked. Jo looked toward him and felt a weird swell of emotion over the overly grown man with the bag of problems on his back that still found it inside of him to care.

“Nothing,” Castiel answered. “Dean, I need to talk to you.”

“Sure, Cas,” he responded with a nod, following him out of the room with a look back at Jo and Sam before turning away.

“So, that’s still a thing?” Jo questioned, her voice coming out smaller than she meant for it to.

“Yea, that’s still a thing,” Sam provided. Jo could feel his eyes on her, knew the sad look he must be giving her, and couldn’t help but be mad at it. “Not officially, of course, they’re both ridiculously blind if you ask me and who knows if they’ll ever get their shit together, but-”

“-but yea,” Jo finished for him, because she didn’t need the spiel, the explanation, not when it was so ridiculously clear what was in front of them. “I’m tired, I’m going to go up.”

“Ok.” Sam looked after her, watching her walk away with her raised head and tough saunter despite the fatigue she felt. “Jo!” he called after her, waiting for her to turn. “I’m glad you’re back.”

Jo nodded, gifted him with a soft smile, but the thing was...she couldn’t tell if _she_ was happy she was back.

* * *

It was bizarrely easy to get back into the swing of hunting. All it took was 12 hours of uninterrupted sleep and Jo was ready to go, at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and looking over papers while futzing with her father’s knife.

“That was fast,” Dean commented, finding her there as he waltzed in with some dirty dishes that were quickly dropped in the sink. “Never letting anything get to you, that'a girl.”

Jo cursed the way her heart leaped a little, at the warm feeling she got from his praise. If there was one thing she wanted to stop, it was feelings for a guy who couldn’t even see her. He was absolutely blind and Jo couldn’t stand being invisible anymore, it killed her. Almost literally, when she thought about it.

“You guys are overlooking a big factor,” Jo announced. “All of the victims come from single parent homes, their deceased parent vacant because of distressing incidents. Basically they all had heart attacks but were are all fairly healthy people...I don’t know if that helps, I don’t know the case that well.”

“Wow, that does,” Dean responded. “Show me everything you got.” Dean put one of his hands on the back of Jo’s chair and the other on the table, looking over the information in front of her. At this distance Jo could smell Dean, the smell of a slight bit of aftershave but mostly just  _him_. It was harsh and masculine and Jo knew she was taking in way too much, but she had been gone forever and here was Dean, older and wiser and still unfairly beautiful for a dude.

“Good morning,” Sam made his presence known, and Jo looked guiltily away from Dean and up to Sam; Jo could tell easily by the way he was purposefully looking away that he had seen her pathetic pining.

“Jo got a good lead,” Dean proclaimed. “Every victim comes from a single parent home and their absent parent died of a heart attack.”

“That makes a lot of sense because then-”

“It would be a continual-”

“Yes! I can’t believe I missed it it’s so-”

“We’ll need to create a frontal-”

Jo tried to tune them out because their combined enthusiasm was entirely disorienting. This constant speech, quick moving and overlapping, she couldn’t remember them being this way. Whether it was because Jo’s memory was just failing her from lack of use or because this was some kind of new development, she didn’t quite know.

“We need to go now,” Dean decided. “Jo, you want in?”

“Of course,” Jo spoke, startled and popping back up and into the conversation. “Count me in.”

“No,” Sam exclaimed.

“What?” Jo asked.

“You should rest, you’ve just come back from the dead. There will be plenty of more hunts.”

“If either of you had just come back from the dead, you wouldn’t take time to rest. You would be right back in the hunt,” Jo argued, clear anger laced in her voice.

“Well, it’s not us, Jo, it’s you,” Sam responded, a concerned look on his face.

Jo wanted to punch it off of his face.

“Since I’m not as strong as you two and clearly incapable of hunting, I guess I’ll just go sleep some more. I hope a hellhound finds you,” Jo yelled, her face scrunched up and closed off. She wasted no time in getting out of the room, halted only momentarily by Sam’s soft, “ _Jo_.”

Jo stopped in her tracks and turned to Sam, her words soft blades that only he could hear. “I have had a lot of people tell me that I need to be safe, that I’m too weak or I can’t hunt because it’s too dangerous or a million other things, but you know what, Sam? Not from you...never from you.”

Sam rubbed a hand over his face and let out a soft sigh. As he listened to Jo’s determined strides up the stairs, his whole body felt heavy with regret.

* * *

Sam entered the house carefully, just in case Jo was lurking somewhere and wouldn’t be at all happy to see him. He threw his coat off and moved carefully up the stairs, the only sounds around him the creeks of the elderly home. What Sam really wanted right now was a shower: he was far too bloody and sweaty from the hunt. Where Dean had seemed perfectly fine and clean afterward, Sam had somehow gotten stuck with all of the grime.

As he passed the bathroom to get to his room and grab a clean pair of clothes, he heard a soft sound coming from the room. “Jo?” he spoke. “Jo, are you in there?” No response came, and Sam slowly pushed open the door.

Jo was sitting on the ground, her back against the bathtub with her head in her hands. Her hair was covering her face, making Sam incapable of seeing exactly what was going on, but he could hear loud, labored breaths. “Jo? Are you alright?”

“Sam?” she responded, clearing her throat and wiping her face quickly. She looked up at him, her eyes slightly trimmed in red, making even her best attempts to look calm fail. “When did you get in?”

“Just a little bit ago. The hunt went well.”

“And, uh- where’s Dean?” she asked.

“He, unlike myself, came out perfectly unscathed and decided he would rather get a beer then come back here,” Sam answered, slowly making his way to the ground next to her. Jo looked oddly fragile, it set him completely off, making him feel uneasy.

“Let me guess, Castiel showed up to save Dean, and he went with him to the bar,” Jo stated. Sam nodded in response, not quite sure how to respond. “I love Cas, I really do,” she stated, her voice full of more emotion than Sam had ever heard of it. She was trying so strongly to get him to understand, to hear what she was trying to say, so Sam stayed silent and listened to every word.

“I don’t want to sound jealous or something and that’s not even what- They have something there and I’m so happy for them I really am and…”

“Jo, I’m sorry about what I said earlier.”

“I’m not mad at you,” Jo told him, willing him through their eye contact to understand. Sam couldn’t help but notice the strikingness of her brown eyes, how they seemed to pierce him with something he couldn't quite understand. “I’m not mad at them. I’m just...mad.”

Her breathing increased, her fists clenching, and Jo moved to her feet and looked at herself in the mirror. “Jo?” Sam questioned, but she seemed to be incapable of hearing him. Her hand came up to her face, touching her cheek, before moving to her hand as she gazed upon it. It was strangely out of body, as if Jo couldn’t quite comprehend that it was her staring back at her.

“I got brought back,” Jo stated. “Out of everyone it was--it was me.”

Suddenly, it became startlingly clear: Jo had survivor’s guilt. Sam could understand that, could empathize with that feelings of unworthiness. Out of everyone...why you? What was worth saving about _you_? Sam wished he could force her to see what other’s saw in her: her strength, her grace and beauty, her remarkable intelligence. Jo was strong and fierce and _sharp_ in the best possible way.

“My mom,” she stated. Sam would never quite figure out why she did what she did next. Was it someone else she saw? Or was the mere image of herself just too much to handle? But either way it didn't matter exactly _why_ she did it, just that it spoke to how ridiculously broken she seemed to be that she rushed forward and punched the mirror with all of her force.

Jo only got one more punch before Sam was up on his feet, grabbing her around her waist and pulling her away from the mirror. Her feet came up, one sending a powerful kick into the mirror and causing several pieces to fall down to the ground. A strangled sort of sob seemed to release itself from her throat as she fell to the ground with Sam’s arms around her. A fallen shard of glass seemed to find its way to her calf, piercing through her sweatpants and into her flesh, but she couldn’t seem to feel it.

Sam was amazed by how ridiculously fragile the small blonde was in his arms. Her body shaking with sobs, indescribable and incomprehensible sounds and words leaving her mouth like long-forgotten prayers, and all he could seem to do was grasp her tighter, like maybe if he could hold her close enough  everything bad could leave, like he could be enough to protect her from the nightmares. Logically, he knew how ridiculous a thought that was; another person could never solve someone’s problems, that was the worst mistake. You needed to want saving to be saved, and no matter how much Sam wanted to simply be able to snap his fingers and fix Jo, he knew she would need to start that process herself.

Sam shifted his body so that Jo was between his legs, her back against his chest, and kept his arms tightly wrapped around her middle. Jo laid her head back, the sobs turning more to silent sounds and breathlessness, and Sam laid his head on top of hers. Jo couldn’t help thinking that for someone who had probably not comforted many people who found themselves falling apart, he was rather good at it. Sam made her feel safe, feel like life could get better, and Jo realized that she wasn’t quite sure if there had ever been a person in her life before who made her feel like that.

A while later, after the tears had subsided and the breathing was soothed back to normal, Sam would pick Jo up and clean her hands. It would hurt and Jo would pretend it didn’t, but she kinda liked the sting because it reminded her of being alive. That small spot on her calf, the place the glass had secretly found her, would always leave a bit of a scar, but Jo would later find that she rather liked that scar.

It reminded her of the day she saw Sam Winchester differently for the first time.

* * *

They only stuck around long enough to fix the broken mirror so there were no questions from the landlord (they might be thieves from time to time, but they weren't _dicks_ ) and then they were off. Jo found it unmeasurably strange sitting in the back of the Impala with the two of them up front, pretending she was part of this dynamic that had always been just the two of them, like she had just found her Christmas presents from Santa hiding in the back of her mom’s closet a whole two weeks before the special day.

“You guys can just drop me off at Garth's if you want,” Jo told them. “I’m all functional again, can probably do some hunting all by my big, bad self.”

“No,” Sam exclaimed, clearing his throat slightly before continuing. “Um, I would just feel better if you stuck with us for a little while. Just so you can ease back into the whole thing.”

“Ok,” Jo responded, a touch of kindness in her voice. She ignored the quick glance Dean shot in Sam’s direction that was full of questioning and chose to focus on the way Sam had spoken, with a sort of softness that made Jo feel warm. People didn’t care for her that way, not the way Sam sounded. It was a whole different kind of compassion she wasn’t sure she had ever heard from anyone before.

“Do you guys think there’s a reason I’m back?” Jo asked after a few minutes of soft classic rock silence. “It’s just weird that I was brought back so long after I died, you know?”

“There’s got to be something, you wouldn’t just pop back into existence,” Sam concluded.

“It would have had to have been an Angelic order, right?” Dean questioned.

“I would presume so,” Sam responded. “Do you think there’s something going on that we don’t know? That would require more hunters and God’s trying to make sure we’ve got a good stockpile of us around?”

“Could be, but wouldn’t we have caught wind of whatever it was by now?” Dean replied.

“We could try to see if any other hunters have been brought back?” Jo suggested. “If what you’re suggesting is true then there would be some other activity to prove it.”

“Ok, we’ll do some research,” Dean decided.

“You mean you’re going to call Garth or someone and ask them to do it?” Jo pointed out, a slight laugh in her voice. 

“Yea,” Dean chuckled through his words. “Man, I missed you, Jo.”

“I would miss me, too,” Jo responded.

Jo found she rather liked the mixture of the sounds of Metallica, rushing wind through Impala windows, and the Winchesters laughing. It might just become one of her favorite sounds.

* * *

Two cases later, the three of them discover a nest of vampires in Fremont, Nebraska who seem to be feeding their way through every person they can get their hands on between the ages of 18 and 27. Jo liked the simplicity of it, knowing that the Vampires were just feeding to feed, that they liked the young blood but not too young just because they did and that there was nothing that had to be figured out. They were the bad guys and the Winchesters and Jo were the good guys and all they had to do was _kill_.

Of course, they ended up highly outnumbered because of some shoddy surveillance work on their parts and the whole thing became far more dangerous, but Jo wouldn’t expect anything to ever be _easy_.

There are two of them coming at her at once, so that just when Jo’s rearing up to take one of their heads off the other one sneak attacks her from behind, making it impossible to ever take one of them out. She’s pretty sure they’re mates, she had decided, because they seemed so intent on protecting the other and in another world that might kind of make her feel bad about her intent to kill (it doesn’t, though, not in this world). Finally, Jo received just enough time to take out the woman in a single swoop that was actually kinda beautiful in a macabre kind of way, but that little bit of time also allowed the man to tackle her to the ground when she was so _not_ focused on him.

“You’re a murderer,” he spat, his hand closing around her windpipe and his weight holding her down.

Jo wondered why he didn’t just kill her quickly or turn her, but she had stopped trying to understand people and monsters a long time ago: neither of them ever made sense. Just as the edges of her vision started to get increasingly blurry and things started to fade around her, the weight of the vampire on top of her disappeared and the oxygen was finally reunited with her lungs.

She looked up and saw Sam smiling down at her, offering his hand which she graciously took. “You’ve never looked so beautiful,” Jo told him with a laugh and a cough, and she found that the smile he shot back kind of made her feel like the most special person on the entire planet.

The smile on his face dropped and his eyes widened; Sam stumbled slightly, his hands moving toward the side of his torso. “I must have gotten cut, I didn’t even feel it,” Sam stated, but it was clearly more than just a simple scrape: the blood was pulsing far more quickly out of the wound than Jo would have liked.

“Dean!” she screamed. Sam started to slump onto her and his weight seemed to be a bit more than she could handle. She looked up and noticed that Castiel must have joined their fight at some point (thank God for that), and wondered how fast he could get them to a Hospital. “Help me!”

Jo lowered Sam as gracefully as she could to the ground when it became too difficult to shoulder his weight. “Sam,” she chastised, “you are not allowed to pass out, do you hear me? Sam!”

“Jo,” he responded, his voice soft. His hand reached up for her face, but the effort of it must have been too much because it dropped back down to his side listlessly. “You’re so pretty.”

“Ok, loverboy,” Dean said, suddenly at his side. “We need to get out of here before someone shows up and sees us surrounded by a ton of dead vampire bodies. Cas! Would you get your feathery ass over here and fix this?”

“I will fix the vampire situation,” Cas stated. “Give me approximately two minutes and thirty seven seconds and I will meet you in the car.”

“Hear that Sam? Two minutes and thirty seven seconds, ain’t that beautiful?” Dean soothed, wrapping Sam’s arm around his shoulder and hoisting him up. Jo took his other side, realizing she probably wasn’t that much of a help but knowing it was all she could do anyway.

Sam stayed semi-conscious until they at least got to the Impala and then he was sprawled on the back seat, completely out. “Cas! CAS!” Dean yelled, Castiel popping up within seconds of his name. Castiel put his fingers to Sam’s forehead, the wound healing itself, but Sam stayed unconscious, the only sign of him being truly alive a soft sigh that left his lips.

“Why didn’t he wake up?” Jo asked panicked.

“Rest does wonders for recovery,” Castiel explained, Dean seeming to understand completely. Jo wanted to argue, but she knew it wasn’t Castiel or Dean she was mad at. She was just _mad_ , mad that Sam was hurt, mad that he was hurt instead of her, mad that good people ended up in absolutely shitty situations. How was that even fair?

“We should just try to get back to the Bunker,” Dean decided. “I can probably get us there in under 3 hours if I really try.”

“Ok,” Jo agreed. She decided she would just sit in the back with Sam, because she liked the idea of him not feeling alone, even if it was such a strange situation they had found themselves in. So, Jo slid into the back seat and put Sam’s head on her lap and hummed his favorite song underneath her breath just in case it was somehow soothing to him.

She wondered when she had even come to know things like Sam’s favorite song without question, but she decided not to ponder it.

* * *

Sam was out for a few days, and Jo seemed to decide it was her personal mission to watch over him. It was strange the sort of things one could notice when staring at someone asleep for long periods of time. The beauty of their smooth features, the steady breaths that continuously went in and out like some kind of strange miracle, and the ghosts of the things their body could do awake: like Sam’s strong, callused hands that seemed to patch her up with a wondrous sort of fragility or his light, pink lips and the long winded explanations that always found their way through them.

Sometimes, as she stared at Sam’s face and didn't want to stop, Jo wondered if maybe that was how Castiel fell in love with Dean -- watching him sleep.

Most of the time, Jo sat in the chair by his bed, her knees up to her chest and her head laying lazily to the side, just watching him breath and being so very happy that he hadn’t stopped yet, but sometimes, when she got really tired and anything could seem like a good idea, she would grab his hand and hold it between hers. She couldn’t help but think that she would rather like to hold Sam Winchester’s hand when he was awake and he could interlace his fingers between hers.

Sometimes she would let herself wonder when she started to see Sam that way, because it really hadn’t been that long ago that she was dead in a coffin and had thought Dean was the Winchester that understood her. How ridiculous a thought it seemed now, she would chuckle slightly underneath her breath.

Three days later Sam finally came to, a soft moan of pain releasing from his mouth and his eyes fluttering before finally finding the strength open. “Sam,” Jo welcomed, a smile spreading across her face that practically went ear to ear.

“Jo,” Sam responded, his voice gravelly and tired. He moved his head to the side and met her eyes; Jo hadn’t realized how much she had missed looking at them. “How long have I been out?”

“A few days,” she responded with a shrug. “Castiel patched you up, but he said you must have needed some recovery time.”

“Did I miss anything?”

“Not really, but you did call me pretty before you passed out so any time you want to admit you’re madly in love with me please do,” Jo joked, a smirk sitting on her face.

“I called you pretty?” he asked, but Jo could tell some joke was on the horizon by the playfulness in his features. “I really must have been losing it.”

“Cruel!” she exclaimed, releasing a laugh at his words. Dean, Jo remembered, suddenly feeling bad for not alerting the older Winchester. “Dean will want to know you’re awake,” she stated aloud, standing up and moving toward the door. “Dean! He’s up!”

Jo heard the clomp of booted (why didn’t Dean take his shoes off inside?) feet as he moved toward the room. “Your brother has been going crazy and I think Castiel could tell, he’s been sticking around a lot more the past few days.”

“Does that bother you?” Sam questioned.

“Sam Winchester,” Jo sighed out, the beauty of him never being quite lost on her, “you’ve been passed out for three days and you wake up and have the energy to give a shit about me? Who made you and decided it was ok to make you that compassionate? I’m fine, some would maybe even say great.”

“I’m glad,” Sam answered, the joking and the lightness washing out of his features and the true base of his emotions, of his caring, evident on his face.

“Sam!” Dean pushed through the door, making his way to the bed and grabbing Sam carefully (but somehow still roughly) into a hug. “Jo,” Dean turned around. “Go take a shower, you smell.”

“Wow,” Jo said sarcastically, “sign me up right now, what a charmer you are Dean Winchester.”

“You’ve been sitting in here without moving for the last three days straight, it isn’t rude it’s factual,” he argued. Sam abruptly looked up, surprise and curiosity on his features as he looked at Jo. Jo could feel her cheeks grow warm and she bowed out of the doorway, leaving the brothers to their moment.

She figured they kinda deserved it.

* * *

Showering, as Dean suggested, proved to be a rather good idea. Jo hadn’t realized how disgusting she was until she was looking at herself in the mirror and then scrubbing the soap against her skin. She spent a lot of time underneath the hot spray, washing away her sins, her impurities, her doubts, and by the time she stepped out of the shower it had felt like a practically religious sort of experience (but she wouldn’t dare let anyone ever hear that).

Jo walked out into the library after she was properly clothed, bypassing Sam’s closed door and heading for the tables. Sam’s laptop was sitting there, so she figured he wouldn’t mind if she used it to do some research. She was 15 minutes in, looking at an article about a town where the elderly were disappearing from the nursing homes at night, when Dean pulled a chair out across from her and cleared his throat.

As Jo closed the laptop and pushed it to the side, Dean pointedly looked down at the shirt she was wearing which just so happened to be one of Sam’s. “I don’t have many clothes,” she argued. “Only the stuff left around by Charlie or the few odds and ends I’ve been able to pick up.”

“Jo, you sat by his bedside for three days straight,” Dean responded.

“You were practically there the whole time, too.”

“Don’t you think it says something when the codependent Winchester brother can stand to be away from his brother longer than you?” Dean pointed out. Jo wondered when Dean got so good at making his points, and there wasn’t even a single gruff “Goddamnit” thrown in there.

“You were only better because Castiel was here and you were too busy staring into each other’s goddamn souls,” Jo fired back. She figured it maybe wasn’t entirely fair, but it felt like a good enough point to bring up.

“You like Sam,” Dean continued, ignoring Jo and choosing to speak louder and gruffer to get his point across. “You’re allowed to like Sam, the chick probably likes you back.”

“I’m not-” Jo began, but she wasn’t quite sure how she was ever going to finish the sentence in the first place. Good enough? Whole enough? Worthy of Sam or maybe it was just not _ready_. Jo didn’t know but they all seemed too stupid to say aloud.

“Don’t,” Dean told her. “Jo, we’re the same person and I know what you’d say. You ain’t poison, Jo, you’re allowed to love him and he’s allowed to love you back. A hunter learns that love makes you vulnerable and at some point decides it isn’t worth it, but it can make you strong, too.”

“Why don’t you listen to yourself?” Jo responded. “You aren’t poison, Dean. What are you waiting for?”

“It’s-”

“If you say ‘different’ I will slap you,” Jo cut him off.

“Just like your mother,” Dean responded with a chuckle. A few weeks ago that would have hurt Jo, but now it just made her feel comforted to still have a part of Ellen with her.

“You love Cas, and he loves you too. I’ve never seen anyone do as much for one person as he has done for you and vice versa,” Jo pointed out. “What are you scared of?”

“A million things,” he admitted, and all Jo could think was _character development_ because Dean would have never let those words slide from his mouth when Jo used to know him, pre-death.

“What are you scared of that really matters?” she rephrased.

“Maybe we can both let go,” Dean proposed. “Maybe it’s about time we did.”

“Ok,” Jo agreed. She punched him in the arm, smiling slightly when he rubbed his arm to humor her.

* * *

Sam was up and walking around, ready for a fight, in just a day. Every time Sam passed her, all Jo could think about were the words Dean had said to her and the sort of promise she had made. She wasn’t scared about telling him, not really, but the amount she wanted Sam did kind of scare her absolutely shitless.

It was getting to a point where everything Sam did was kind of turning her on in one way or another. Him typing on his laptop made her think about his hands and them holding tightly onto her waist, pulling her closer. When he explained a potential case, she could only seem to focus on his lips as they formed the words and what they could do if him and her were alone and-

Dean’s pointed stare cut that thought off pretty quickly.

A week later, Jo was sitting on the counter in the bunker throwing raspberries up into the air and catching them in her mouth while Sam did dishes.

“What do you plan on doing in the future?” Jo asked.

“Not dying.” Jo laughed and a small smile etched its way on his face. “What about you? You want to go back to college?”

“Hell no,” Jo responded. “You know, it’s kinda weird looking at you.”

“Thanks,” Sam answered sarcastically.

“No, I didn’t mean it like that,” Jo told him. “When I look at you I can barely see the Sam that went to Stanford. You’re older now, actually, me being dead and coming back just as I was added a few years between us. The whole older man thing kinda turns me on.”

Sam sputtered, dropping a plate in the sink and turning toward her. “Excuse me?”

“I think you heard me perfectly clear, Sammy,” she whispered back, a smirk on her face.

“Jo-”

“Any time you want to admit that you like me the way I like you or you want to make out with me or just take me back to your bedroom and-”

“Jo,” he warned, taking a few steps toward her. “You can’t just say this stuff, if you don’t mean it…”

“Oh, Sam Winchester,” Jo whispered, wrapping her arms around his neck and putting her lips next to his ear, “do I ever mean it.”

That’s all Sam needed to hear before grabbing the side of Jo’s face and pulling her to him. The second Sam’s lips were on hers, everything inside of Jo’s body seemed to light on fire. Sam was passionate, with every single thing he did and she couldn’t help but appreciate it. His hands grabbed at her and Jo never wanted the fire between them to stop. Sam’s tongue was suddenly in her mouth, his hands grabbing her legs and guiding her to wrap her legs around his waist. Jo was only so happy to comply and she could feel Sam trying to get them to his bed, or the couch, she wasn’t quite sure and she didn’t really care.

Jo kissed over his neck, allowing him at least his sight as he walked to wherever he was going. Sam stopped at the big table in the library, setting her down and arching over her. Sam Winchester was pure sin, she decided, and it was the happiest sin she had ever decided to make in her entire life. Sam’s hands found their way underneath her tank top, and having his big hands cover her skin lit her up to the point that Jo couldn’t help releasing a loud moan.

A loud cough came from further down the room and Sam and Jo both stopped their actions, both breathing heavily, and looked to where the sound came from. Dean and Castiel were sitting at the far end of the other table, looking at the two of them, and Jo could feel the heat rushing to her cheeks as she became increasingly conscious of her pushed up shirt and wild hair.

“Did you guys want us to videotape it too while you’re at it?” Dean asked, that mocking kind of smile on his face.

“Jerk,” Sam called, but his voice came out breathier than he probably meant for it to be.

“Bitch,” Dean replied with a wink. “Please get a room.”

Sam took a step back from Jo, allowing her the space to get off of the table and back to her feet. She didn’t really like having the empty space between them, but she also was aware of the position they were in. Dean shot a thumb’s up in Jo’s direction and she rolled her eyes at him, turning away as she felt Sam grab her hand.

“Use protection!” Dean yelled.

“Fuck off!” Jo called back, flipping him off behind her and not bothering to look back.

As soon as they were in the hallway and out of their sight, Sam was right back on her.  

Jo decided she wasn’t quite sure if she ever wanted him to leave.

* * *

Their relationship was pretty solidified after that. Jo couldn’t even remember why she contemplated leaving them to go off hunting by herself in the first place. Sam was like a perfect distraction, like a hot chocolate on a cold day, like a million other things but at the base of it what he really was was pure  _happiness_. Sam made Jo completely and irrevocably happy.

Half a week after Sam kissed Jo absolutely senseless and, well, a bit _more_ than just that (Jo doesn’t kiss and tell), Jo walked into the library to see Dean closer to Castiel than she had ever seen him before. Their foreheads were touching, and Jo knew that she could stay and look on, could see the start of what had been building for so long, but she figured it might be nice to let them be and figure it out themselves.

Jo left them to go find Sam and when she did he welcomed her with a smile and a kiss. Their days were like that from then on: filled with lightness and sunshine (trust her, that thought kinda makes her want to puke too). There were bad moments, dark times, but Jo  found she even liked those, too. The four of them against the world, she liked to think.

They never quite figured out why Jo was brought back, but Sam liked to tell her it was to save him. Jo liked to tell him he saved her.

Maybe in the end they just needed to save each other.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why I love this pairing so much all of a sudden? Like...I don't know. I'm going crazy. I hope you enjoy!  
> For more shtuff here's my tumblr -> [castielscrusade](http://castielscrusade.tumblr.com/)


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